Not This Time
by Roadrunnerz
Summary: Episode "Sweet Sixteen" S2 from Eli Loker's POV. #McBreezy's Fic Challenge
1. Chapter 1

Thanks to McBreezy for coming up with this fic challenge! Without it I'd never have thought to try and get into Loker's head.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter One <strong>

My name is Eli Loker and I'm the resident gopher at the Lightman Group.

Okay, so the resume says lead research assistant. Truth is I do that and everything else that Doctor Cal Lightman wants me to. I'm basically at his beck and call.

Not that he appreciates it or anything. In fact, he usually goes the extra step of letting me know that the option of firing me is always at the tip of his tongue. Some days I think he's salivating at the thought of me giving him a good reason.

_Did I mention that I don't get paid? _

Mind you, I do accept the blame for_ that_ part, even though I still don't regret the decision that caused Lightman to give me the option of leaving the company or continuing on as an unpaid intern.

Most days, I have no idea why he picks on me the way he does, but in some twisted way the more he does, the more I'm determined to stick it out. The more I try to do whatever it takes to finally make him realize that I count for something.

_Why?_

Because Cal Lightman is the best at what he does. Because nothing fascinates me more than human behaviour and no one can read it better than he does. I'm in awe of his skills, like a kid in awe of his favourite ballplayer, wishing he could one day hit a grand slam like that.

Ria Torres thinks I worship him. Sad thing is, she's probably right. How else could you explain why I'm still here? Sometimes I can't explain it myself.

It's never even occurred to me to stand up to him.

That is, until the day I was almost killed by a bomb meant for him.

* * *

><p>It all happens so fast. The blast. The debris that hits me and brings the metallic taste of blood to my lips. The screams of the people that surround me. The smell of burning gasoline.<p>

Too many of my senses are hit all at once and I don't know what to do or where to go. I walk around the scene in a trance until Ria spots me near the main door of the Lightman Group office and pulls me inside as she calls for help.

In spite of everything, there's something about being back inside that building that feels almost like home.

My ears are still ringing from the blast and it's only when I'm inside the darkened office hallway that I start feeling the sting of the debris that hit me. There's blood all over my face and I'm not sure where it's coming from or even whether it's mine.

"There was a man in the car...and he's dead..." I feel the need to explain. Apparently, it doesn't matter if I can't tell my right hand from my left. I'm a scientist, so facts first. It's ingrained in me.

"He's in shock," someone says. A female voice. Foster maybe. Lightman is there too but he doesn't say anything.

Foster's hand is on my back and I can feel her leading me into the break room and giving me a nudge into a chair. Torres brings in a first-aid kit and Foster starts fixing up my face. Ordering me to drink some water. She does it gently, but calmly and methodically, saying almost nothing in the process. She's a scientist too, after all.

I catch Lightman standing in the doorway, fretting over getting a hold of Emily who was supposed to meet him here just before the bomb went off. From the corner of my eye I see Anna bringing him a package.

Funny, _I'm _the one sitting here with a face full of blood and he still hasn't said so much as a word to me.

My anger helps me get over my shock.

There's still no electricity in the building, but someone's put a battery powered radio on the table, next to the first aid kit, and turned it on to the news. According to them the identity of the dead man is still unknown.

Lightman paces and reiterates that finding Emily is the most important thing right now. I must've missed the look he flashed Foster as he said it, but not Torres. She catches everything and doesn't hesitate to let you know it.

"You know something about this bomb!" she tells him.

Torres must've been right because Foster stops what she's doing and follows Lightman out of the room.

The two of them are so good at what they do and know each other so well, they can convey an entire message with one look. Sometimes I wish I could do the same and other times I think it must be more of a curse than a gift.

But even more so, their wordless way of communicating is a reminder that when it comes down to it, the Lightman Group consists of the two of them and the rest of us.

Torres might see everything but it doesn't mean they'll tell her everything and I take some consolation in that fact.

"They_ know_," Torres repeats to me, incredulously after they leave. "They know about this bomb."

I hear a door shut in the distance as the smell of blood mixes with that of antiseptic cream in my nostrils. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah," she replies with a touch of indignation. As if I should doubt the natural wunderkind.

The certainty of her answer makes my blood boil, just as my head starts to throb. I can't remember the last time I was this angry. "So they know...and even though it almost killed me they don't think I deserve to know too? That is such bullshit, Ria."

I get up from the chair and march towards Lightman's office.

"Hey! What are you doing?" Torres demands, coming along, after me.

"Getting answers," I mumble.

"Wait!" She tugs at my shirt. "You think barging into his office will make him tell you? This is Lightman we're talking about."

For once I don't give a damn.

Normally, thanks to a steady mix of fear and respect, I'd be the last person to barge into Lightman's office.

But not this time. Almost dying makes you weirdly fearless.

The electricity comes back on just before I open the door.

Lightman and Foster are in the middle of a conversation and that too makes me angry. Knowing that they're calmly discussing the bomb that almost killed _me_.

"You can't just sit in here and talk about..."

There's more I want to say, but Torres gives me a look and a push that tells me I'm treading on thin ice.

Bleeding or not, neither Foster or Lightman react to my presence. Typical.

I turn on the TV and switch it to the news, while they continue their conversation as if I'm not even in the room.

Lightman asks Torres whether they've gotten a hold of Emily.

I glare at him and finally he acknowledges my presence.

"I can't just what, Loker?" he grumbles, more annoyed than anything else.

I tell him he can't just walk away from me when anyone with half a brain knows that they both know about the bomb that almost killed me.

I can't remember ever confronting him like this, but it feels good.

Lightman doesn't answer me, his attention is now on the TV now as they announce the name of the man who died in the blast outside our office. Henry Andrews. A British-born, fossil-fuel entrepreneur.

Meanwhile, Torres catches something on Foster's face that I completely miss. "You _do _know that man," she points out but Foster stays mum.

"Okay, Lightman," Torres says softly. "We _know _you know the victim, what else do you know?"

Her insistence seems to hold more weight than mine, because this time he answers. Lightman explains that Andrews was killed by an Irish terrorist by the name of Jimmy Doyle.

How he knows that, I have no idea.

He also informs us that Andrews isn't a fossil-fuel entrepreneur, like they said on the news, but a British liaison for counter-terrorism at the Pentagon.

"Seven years ago he was my boss," Lightman adds.

Torres seems more interested in reading Foster, who still hasn't said more than two words to either of us. "Okay, who was he to you, Foster? Did you work at the Pentagon too?" she asks her.

Silence.

Not that it matters to Torres.

"Oh my god...you did."

It's then that Emily comes running into the office and Lightman scoops her up into a hug.

I don't begrudge him his reunion, but it doesn't lessen my need for answers.

"What's going on?" Emily asks.

"That's what we all wanna know," I remind him.

At this point, Lightman finally offers me a half-assed apology. Says he's sorry for what I went through this morning, but that right now he needs a moment with his daughter. After that he'll let us know how he's going to use us on this.

"That's how it works," he tells me. "So, end of conversation."

If I thought I was livid a few minutes ago, I was wrong. _Now_ is when I'm ready to punch things.

"_That_ was a conversation?" I'm dumbstruck by the way he's blown me off.

"Hey..." Torres, who catches everything, senses that I'm about to give Lightman a whole other piece of my mind.

She pushes me out the door before I get a chance say what I_ really_ want to.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two **

_Later_

I've cleaned off most of my face and changed into a ratty old MIT sweat shirt by the time I poke my head into Foster's office.

Her door is open, as it usually is, so there is no barging this time.

I know she's on her personal laptop and she closes it as soon as she catches me standing in the doorway.

"Porn?" I ask her with the kind of cockiness that always leaves me when I'm around Lightman these days. "You _are _human."

She offers me a smile but I catch her anxiousness. "You seem to be making a speedy recovery."

"What are you really working on there?"

"Personal stuff," she answers. "It's my personal laptop."

"In the middle of all this?" I ask her. "That's what I call compartmentalization. Did they teach you that at the Pentagon?"

I'm completely out of line and I know it. She's my boss as much as Lightman is.

But the truth is, I'm still so angry I can barely stand it.

And Gillian Foster makes for an easier target than Cal Lightman.

I need a release for my anger, the same way a kid who's bullied at school goes home and takes it out on his parents. Because he can. Because, unlike the guys who actually deserve his wrath, his parents won't beat the crap out of him. They won't put him up for adoption because of it.

I take it out on Foster because deep down, I know she won't fire me. She's been angry with me before, but her anger is nothing compared to Lightman's. Mostly, she just treats me with decency and kindness.

In a rational world, you'd think that would make me respect her _more _than him, rather than less. Because really, Foster deserves it. And professionally, she's just as much at the top of her field as Lightman is at the top of his.

But that's not how human behaviour works.

I don't give her the respect she deserves because I envy her too much for having the two things that I want so badly: Lightman's trust and respect.

Gillian Foster is the only person in this building that he treats like an equal and some days that makes me absolutely crazy.

"Can I help you with something, Eli?"

Foster's use of my first name is her way of telling me that I've overstepped my boundaries. A subtle little nuance from the language expert.

Not that I care.

"Actually, you can, _Gillian_."

It's then that I show her the computer print-outs and again I feel that same reckless bravado I felt earlier in Lightman's office.

"You hacked into my computer? You can't do that!" Foster gets up from her chair and she's as angry with me as she's ever been.

But I don't feel threatened in the least.

"In my sleep," I quip and then I tell her what I found out.

I tell her that I know it was Henry Andrews, the man whose blood I cleaned off my face this morning, who ordered her to evaluate a member of his counter-terrorist team at the Pentagon in 2003.

That this team member was Cal Lightman. He was the one who was ordered to undergo a psych evaluation conducted by her.

Foster doesn't say anything when I tell her all this, as is often the case when she's really, truly pissed.

They're opposites that way, Foster and Lightman.

Lightman erupts like a volcano and Foster, she retreats into silence, keeping it all inside, bubbling just under the surface.

"Could've been worse," I add, unable to resist one last jab. "Could've been porn."

It's then that she finally decides to tell me more.

Foster explains that back then Lightman didn't believe that the gunmen who killed Jimmy Doyle's wife and daughter were the actual culprits. That he thought it was a cover-up and he wanted to go public with it.

That in order to prevent him from doing that, or at least to discredit his mental state if he did, he'd been ordered to undergo the psych evaluation. By his boss, Henry Andrews.

It's all starting to make sense now. Lightman wanted to blow the cover on a botched Pentagon-ordered hit and they needed to stop him.

_Who in the world would've been able to stop Lightman if he was on mission?_

"Did Lightman ever blow the whistle?" I want to know.

"His life was in serious danger."

That's what Foster considers an answer?

"See, that doesn't sound like Lightman," I remind her.

"A lot of what Lightman does these days is because of what he didn't do back then."

There's more to this. More than she's telling me with her cryptic answers. But I'm not Torres. I can't decipher it just by looking at her face.

There is one thing I do know, and I tell her as much. "So I was almost killed by a terrorist who was after Lightman."

And on that note, our conversation ends.

It's all I get out of her. If there is more and it concerns Lightman, Foster won't tell. She's fiercely and blindly loyal to him.

Sometimes I wonder why. Because some days I think he doesn't deserve Foster's respect any more than he deserves mine. It makes me wonder if there's a story behind that loyalty and whether I'll ever find out what it is.

Things get more and more complicated as the day goes on and I realize that what I found out about the bomb by hacking into Foster's computer was just the tip of the iceberg. That maybe I wasn't even right about Lightman being the target.

I probably could've gone home and spent the rest of the day on the couch. Even Lightman wouldn't begrudge me that, I think. Nearly getting killed by a bomb is justification for a sick day.

But I want to know who set that bomb and why.

So I head back to the lab and even change back into a proper shirt.

Lightman and Foster manage to get a hold of Doyle, and slowly, one layer after another, they start unravelling the cover-up. They even somehow get Andrews' old boss into the office so Lightman can read him.

The guy never actually admits to ordering the hit on Doyle's wife and daughter, but he doesn't have to. Lightman gets the confession he's looking for just by looking at his face.

And with it he finally gets the chance to give Doyle the name of the man who pulled the trigger. To make amends.

Mind you, that doesn't explain why Lightman didn't expose the cover-up right from the start and it's one question that nags me in the back of my mind.

It's late and the sun's long gone down by the time I get ready to leave.

I see that there's one dim light that's still on in Lightman's office and I head towards it because I want an answer before my fearless bravado wears off completely.

Before I go back to being Eli Loker, resident gopher at the Lightman Group.

From a distance, through the half-open door, I see that Foster is in there talking with him. A ray of light catches the tears in her eyes. There's a pause and a moment of silence, before Lightman steps towards her and puts his arms around her, pulling her into his embrace.

In return, she holds on to him tightly and buries her face in his shoulder.

The unexpected intimacy between them leaves me feeling like a voyeur.

I back away from his office as quietly as I possibly can and they don't hear me leaving the building.

I still want an answer. Even more so after seeing what I've seen just now.

But not tonight.

Maybe next time.


End file.
